WASHINGTON—For the first time, students signing up this
fall for basic physiology and pharmacology courses at the University of
California, San Diego (UCSD), School of Medicine will not be performing
invasive procedures on live dogs. Until now, dogs were used in six-hour
teaching exercises and killed once the class was over. The university
has now decided, however, to give the dogs a break.“

UCSD now joins the nation’s best medical schools, all of
which have done away with crude, obsolete dog labs and replaced them
with more exciting, clinically relevant, and humane teaching methods,”
says Larry A. Hansen, M.D., a professor at UCSD. “Medical students are
learning to preserve and prolong life, and the lethal dog labs ran
counter to that basic goal.”

A study authored by Dr. Hansen, published in Academic
Medicine, found that a majority of U.S. medical schools, including
Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, no longer use live animals in any of their
pharmacology, physiology, or surgery courses.

For several years, Dr. Hansen and other prominent
members of the medical community have been urging UCSD to replace the
lethal dog labs with high-tech alternatives. Now, UCSD joins the
University of British Columbia, and other medical schools that have
recently abandoned live animal labs in favor of more modern teaching
methods.

For an interview with Dr. Hansen or another member of
the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), contact Jeanne
S. McVey, 202-686-2210, ext. 316. This is the latest victory in PCRM’s
long-running campaign to promote humane alternatives to live animal
labs. Currently, more than 75 percent of U.S. medical schools do not use
live animals in teaching exercises.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a nonprofit health organization dedicated
to promoting preventive medicine and higher standards in medical
research, education, and practice.

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